I attempted to watch Sex and the City at the height of its popularity, because I like to keep up with pop culture, and because I enjoy good writing. Beyond all the fornication and strange manifestations of self-discovery that most Christians would chafe at, one main thing kept me from being fan: what I’ll call the Friends Phenomenon. Like Friends, the writers of Sex and the City managed to reduce the city’s teeming sea of various cultures, races, religions, and classes to a diluted monolithic wading pool. I didn’t recognize my hometown; I didn’t see myself in any of the faces of the characters, and the women were reduced to martinis and Manolo Blahniks. Yawn.

I had hoped for something different while watching GCB (Darren Star, who produced Sex and the City, also produced this show). This time, the city is Dallas, and the women are good, Christian…well…you know, B’s. Like Sex and the City, a group of women are the focus of the ensemble cast, and they seem to have large sums of disposable income. That’s where the similarities end.

A touch of family drama. A dash of fight sequences. A pinch of fantasy. Mixing them all together would seem like mixing oil, water, and sand, but instead we get an aesthetic, personal approach to independent film that only Ink can bring. With excellent lighting, script, and acting, Ink dazzles the eye with dream-like cinematography, touches the heart with authentic characters, and provokes the soul with spiritual themes fashioned for an audience that appreciates film as art with a purpose.

As humans fall asleep they are visited either by Storytellers, who make dreams to the slumbering world, or Incubi, the givers of nightmares. As the two sides travel around giving out their dreams, a mysterious deformed creature known as Ink abducts the soul of a young girl, Emma, in hopes of bartering her for a place among the Incubi. The Storytellers join with the Pathfinder, who has the power to feel the beat of the world and manipulate it, to save Emma before her soul is lost forever.

Before viewing War Horse, the latest Steven Spielberg film, my first thought was, “Oh no. Not another horse movie.” Horse movies tend to portray the underdog horse and its owner working together to beat the odds in some sort of contest. Next.

With War Horse, that’s only partly true. Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) is a teenage farmer’s son who embraces the challenge of training Joey, a young horse his drunk and impulsive father bought at the market. Frustrated with Joey, Albert’s father sells him to the British military when World War I breaks out. From there the story follows Joey through his experience going from unlikely plow horse to war horse.

The Kendrick brothers are back with lots of truth and a little less cheese

Courageous, the new film by the Kendrick brothers of Fireproof and Facing the Giants fame, has those trademark Kendrick moments. Which is a good thing and a bad thing.

There are those scenes that should have been touching, but instead you cringe: A grieving mother makes sobbing noises without a single tear emerging from her non-bloodshot eyes. A little girl is hoisted up and held by her father—extra cheese, please—at the height of a careening cops-and-robbers chase, while the camera spins around the dad and daughter in slow motion so you get the point, and get the point, and get the point: Dads are important.